pffAlthough it is quite possible he was carrying a cargo of Swiss cuckoo clocks, most are made in Germany. The cuckoo clock is often wrongly associated with Switzerland, as in the movie The Third Man. In the USA, this error is probably due to a story by Mark Twain in which the hero depicts the Swiss town of Lucerne as the home of cuckoo clocks.
(
Bloop Fri 16 Jul, 22:10,
Sat 27 Sep 2008, 14:08,
archived)
I love that line from The Third Man""Switzerland have hundreds of years of peace and what was their gift to the world? The Cuckoo Clock."
(
Chickenhawk is no longer Arkwright.,
Sat 27 Sep 2008, 14:12,
archived)